


(Wives Not Returnable)

by magnificent



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Angst and Humor, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, Controlling partner, Denial, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Light Dom/sub, Mail Order Brides, Self-Esteem Issues, suddenly this got dark??, wow look at all these shitty tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:50:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9385994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificent/pseuds/magnificent
Summary: Ahzrukhal gets suckered into enrolling in a matchmaking service.





	1. Margaret Buxton, Matchmaker

“A beer for me and a martini for the lady.”

Ahzrukhal gives the couple a slight smile, a tilt of the head, and puts an ice-cold bottle on the counter. The martini is easy enough to make, nothing challenging, just one part dry vermouth and six parts gin, but it gives him something to do instead of faking smiles at the goddamn rotters drinking their lives away.

The ghoul thanks him quietly, taking a sip of her cocktail before murmuring to her male companion. It's obvious that they aren't the sort of customers who want to talk to him, so Ahzrukhal drifts towards the other end of the bar.

 _Dammit._ It's a slow day—as slow as they usually are, anyway. Nothing but a few lazy customers and good old Patches, coming in with a pathetic handful of caps and begging for some more Jet. Reliable as clockwork.

It'd be something else if there were some caravans coming through. The smoothskins are always fun to intimidate, to haggle with and threaten. Ahzrukhal enjoys toying with them, giving delicate hints and faking expressions. They think that they're good traders, but Ahzrukhal has been playing their games long before they were even born. Before their _parents_ were born. He could smooth-talk a fresh-faced ghoul into buying Radaway, for goodness sake. _That_ had been a good day.

The doors whisk open once more, and Ahzrukhal fixes a shark-toothed smile on the newcomer. His grin turns the slightest bit feral when he sees who it is: a beautiful smoothskin woman, in her late thirties, if he can still guess at ages properly, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a blue dress with little white beads adorning it, and of all things, white gloves.

She reeks of money, and Ahzrukhal wants it.

“Hello, madam,” he calls, pitching his voice a little lower, seductive. “Welcome to the Ninth Circle. My name is Ahzrukhal. What might I get for you today?”

The woman marches up to him with a smile; Ahzrukhal looks into her button-blue eyes and narrows his own. The smile is forced; not out of disgust for his skin, or his voice, or anything else; but it is forced because she, too, wants something from him.

_Interesting._

“Mr. Ahzrukhal,” she says, her posture confident, “A pleasure to meet you. Wouldn't you know, I actually came here today specifically to see you.”

He raises his eyebrows, snorting lightly, and says, with a practiced air of disinterest, “Oh?”

She beams. “Yessir! I'm not here to buy. In fact, I'm here to offer you a special proposition. Once in a lifetime! Something you won't find anywhere else in the wasteland!”

At her tone, he bristles. _One of those saleswomen, eh? Not again..._

“Let me guess,” he sneers. “Some crackpot deal to cure ghoulism? A skin cream to lessen its effects? A false nose, maybe? Listen, smoothskin, I know a swindler when I see one. And I've never fallen for these vile marketing schemes before. There's nothing to _fix_ ghoulism. So if you aren't buying anything, then get out of my bar.”

She only smiles.

“Oh,” the woman says, “but I'm not talking about ghoulism. Yes, impossible to fix, I know, I've heard plenty of people ask before. No, this is something _real._ And something you won't find without my help.”

He leans against the bar, towards her, and to her credit, she does not back up. His estimation of her rises slightly at that. She's staring him down like a target, seeing past the rotting skin and oozing burns, past the man, past the humanity; she's searching for his tells and vulnerabilities.

To her, he's a customer, and nothing else.

“Go on,” he says.

“I'm talking about true love,” she says.

Ahzrukhal chokes.

She grins, looking smug, as if she's already caught him. “Yes, true love! It might seem surprising to you, but it exists, even two hundred years after the war! And I and I alone can help you find it!”

He stares at her, completely caught off-guard, and manages, “I'm... a ghoul.”

“Oh, silly things like race don't matter,” she beams. “My name's Margaret Buxton. I represent an agency based in Atlanta. There's a few offices all over the East Coast, from Florida to Maine. I'm from the Baltimore branch. We visit every town and city that can be reached by ocean! That means there's an even larger pool of potential wives to pull from!”

“ _Wives?”_

“We _are_ a matchmaking service, Mr. Ahzrukhal!” the woman chirrups. She pushes a business card onto the counter top, and Ahzrukhal takes it, aware of the eyes of his customers on him. It's not often that someone takes him off-guard, and for it to be for such a ridiculous reason...

It's a printed business card, just like something from before the War. _She must have powerful contacts to be able to afford custom printing,_ he muses, flipping it over; _Margaret Buxton, Matchmaker,_ and on the other side is a pair of stylized silver hearts and a grinning Vault Boy character beside _Wastelanders Connect! Meet your true love in less six months! Satisfaction guaranteed! (wives not returnable)._

He clears his throat. “This character here. Are you associated with Vault Tec?”

“What a good eye you have!” Ms. Buxton gushes. “Yes! Our company is descended from the makers of the G.O.A.T. and the Marriage Compatibility Test! We might not be Vault Tec anymore, but we have all the science and reliability of any other Pre-War invention! Isn't that amazing?”

She absolutely glows at this, and looks at him expectantly.

Ahzrukhal sighs. If nothing else, her enthusiasm is commendable, even if it is unwelcome.

“Madam,” he says, “I think you are interviewing the wrong person. Ghoulishness aside, I am over two hundred years old—the chances of yourself finding another ghoul close to my age, let alone one that is compatible-”

“Not to worry, Mr. Ahzrukhal!” Ms. Buxton interrupts cheerfully. “Our test has a one hundred percent success rate! We make sure that we match all of your needs, desires, and dreams to the perfect girl! Whoever you test out to will be the best woman you could ever find! Want to know how it works?”

Ahzrukhal blinks, opening his mouth, and then glares. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” she says cheerily, and reaches forward to lightly smack his arm.

Ahzrukhal glances to the corner where Charon is already striding forward, and gives a minute head shake. Wouldn't do for his dog to hurt the smoothskin, no matter how annoying she might be. The display of wealth isn't just for show; Ahzrukhal has no doubts that she has guards of her own somewhere in Underworld—probably right outside the door. If he lets Charon do anything to Ms. Buxton, there'll be hell to pay.

The bodyguard nods, stepping back, and leans against the wall once more.

The woman continues, “I know you're curious, you silly man! Alright, this is what we do. You make one easy payment, and then we give you our Certified Personality Exam! It finds out all sorts of things about you that you probably don't even know yourself! It even surprises us sometimes! Those pre-War scientists sure were smart, huh?”

Ahzrukhal grunts, eyes sliding to the side. _Get on with it and leave._

“For instance... some of the questions find out your levels of empathy, your sense of justice, your rigidity—all things that we have to know if we're to match a woman to you! It goes far beyond simply introversion or extroversion! Well? What do you say?”

“Not interested,” Ahzrukhal growls.

Ms. Buxton's eyes narrow, and her smile widens. “Why is that?”

“There's plenty of single ghoul women around here,” Ahzrukhal says flatly, “and none of them interest me. I highly doubt that you would be able to find one that would.”

“Who says that it would be a ghoul?”

Well, _that_ flummoxes him.

That crafty saleswoman... at seeing his reaction, her eyes glitter with victory. “In fact, most of our female clientele are pure humans. There's certainly a good chance that you would be matched with one! More than a good chance, even, since you can specify what race you're looking for in particular!”

Ahzrukhal's lips (what remains of them, anyway) thin. “You're telling me that I could be matched with a smoothskin. One who _wouldn't_ demand to only be put with another smoothskin?”

Ms. Buxton hums, and checks her file for a brief moment. “Well,” she says, “I've spent the past month searching for sign-ups, and twenty percent of the local ladies have claimed no preference. Isn't that lovely?”

He growls, “Twenty percent, huh? You sure it shouldn't be lower?”

She smiles despite his murderous expression and says, calmly, “Unfortunately, many young ladies in the Capitol Wasteland have fallen on hard times. Some of them are willing to overlook age or race in exchange for the proper match.”

Ahzrukhal considers this as he serves drinks to the next batch of customers. It makes sense, especially if the matchmaking service is seeking out addicted or enslaved or starving women. There are plenty of smoothskins who turn to prostitution in order to survive. Surely they would think that living with a ghoul for the rest of their lives would be better; sleeping with one man, in comfort, even if he does ooze more than just semen in their bed.

At that thought, he presses idly against a small pressure on his arm, and scowls— _damn._ Another blister popped accidentally. If he doesn't get Abraxo on it soon, the shirt will have a yellow stain on the elbow, and he'll have to buy _another_ from Tulip.

“Can...” he begins, and then grits his teeth as he finishes the question, “Can I request a virgin?”

_Hook, line, and sinker._

Ms. Buxton's lips peel back in a decidedly vile grin. “Why, yes, you can. There may be more expenses, however. Virgins are always a top commodity.”

Shit.

He sighs. “How much?”

“Depending on the girl. Some of them have incurred debts, you see, and that's why they apply to be beautiful, biddable wives for anyone who might want them! Our typical fee is one thousand caps—more than the price of some slaves, of course, but you get what you pay for—a flawless young virgin is certainly worth more than that! And the other debts are yours to take on after that. Some of them are several hundred caps in debt, some several thousand, and some none at all.”

His customers are openly staring now, clearly amused, and Ahzrukhal grinds his teeth. “Fine. One thousand caps. I'll pay you. Please wait here.”

And he pushes off from the bar, away from the amazed stares of his customers, past the gleeful eyes of Ms. Buxton, and heads into his bedroom to grab some caps... and change his goddamn shirt.

 

* * *

 

Fifteen minutes later, Ahzrukhal has kicked the customers out of the bar and is sitting at one of the tables, flummoxed, as Charon watches him with what he can only assume is sadistic glee. _Damn feral bastard..._ he thinks, glaring up at his bodyguard, but Charon does not react, as usual, only shifting his weight against the wall. He thinks he can see the humor glittering beyond his eyes anyway.

 _“Being in fear of what my partner is going to do to me physically, is arousing,”_ he reads aloud, and stares at Ms. Buxton. “You must be joking.”

He's sure he hears a snicker from Charon.

“These are necessary questions, Mr. Ahzrukhal,” the saleswoman replies. “It's imperative that we match both your emotional _and_ physical needs. If one of those needs is to have a partner who enjoys tying you down or whipping you, well...”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and growls, and reluctantly fills in a bubble for _somewhat yes._

 _“Would you injure yourself for sexual purposes..._ for goodness sake!” he snarls, and Charon outright laughs. “What kind of idiocy is this?”

“Please, just answer the questions.”

Fortunately, most of them get better after that: _How confident are you in social situations?_ and _What kind of build do you prefer for your partner?_

After roughly two hours Ahzrukhal finishes, tosses the pen down onto the table, and glares at that foul Ms. Buxton. “You had better be paying _me_ after all of this.”

“Mm,” she says, pleased, and picks up the stack of papers. “Don't be such a baby, you'll get your reward in time. Now—this is the very hardest part of the preparations, alright?”

He nods, hollowly. He thinks that this horrible woman could conquer the wastelands if she wanted to. _Fuck._ It feels as if his energy was sucked right out of him. “What is it?” he asks, defeated.

“The waiting process!” she beams. “All this hard work, and now you have to wait for the matchmaking to begin! We'll take your results back to our lab in Atlanta, and go through the database and find a girl for you. Once we do, we'll pick her up and have her sent down. And that'll be that! You'll have a wife in no time.”

He waves a hand, trying to find the right words: “And... if it doesn't... work out?”

“No returns, Mr. Ahzrukhal! If you are dissatisfied with your wife, you may voice your concerns with us at one of our bi-yearly check-ups and we can send her off elsewhere—perhaps even give her a place with the company. However, any costs she incurs will be yours alone.”

“Very well,” he says, tiredly. At this point he's just glad to have it over.

“Great!” Ms. Buxton chatters, and is frighteningly bold enough to not only shake his hand but give air kisses on either side of his face. “What a wonderful day! Such a pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Ahzrukhal! I'll be working hard to help you find the girl of your dreams!”

She scurries out the door, and it shuts loudly behind her.

Charon holds back a laugh, leaving it as a strangled noise in his throat.

“Shut the fuck up,” Ahzrukhal snarls at his bodyguard, “or else I'll starve you for the next week and a half.”

The ghoul's face returns to normal, although the burning hatred does not go away. _The one thing I could never beat out of him..._

Muttering, Ahzrukhal stalks off to his bedroom, exhausted, and promptly forgets about the entire affair for the next six months.

 


	2. Unexpected Guest

The Ninth Circle is packed. Against all odds, the caravans had reached Underworld prior to the rare deluge of acid rain, and now the smoothskins and ghouls are trapped inside for the next few days, unless they want to risk radiation burns, or in the case of the ghouls, regular old pH burns. Even though the rads would cure them as fast as the acid burnt, it wouldn't be the nicest sensation, unless you were looking to give yourself a quick wake-up call.

And for Ahzrukhal, this means that he is busy as hell.

“I'll have a vodka on ice!”

“Bottle of gin for two?”

“Hey, ghoul, bring me a beer!”

He's sweating, which is never a good sign; ghouls are slower to sweat than smoothskins, and the smell is atrocious. He's one of the few ghouls who has never truly gotten used to the stench of his own body, the scent of rot and disease that their race carries. He supposes that it's fortunate that there's so many smoothskins gathered, with their own vast array of scents—smoke and Jet and blood, all interspersed with the smell of human body odor, that acrid, musky tang.

And on top of everything else, he's got a freeloader on his hands.

“Patches,” he says, trying to maintain civility, “Please buy quickly and leave. No hand-outs today, I'm absolutely swamped.”

“Ah... _hic..._ jus' need a little pick-me-up... nothin' much... Jet?” he asks hopefully.

“You know we don't sell that here,” he says patiently, casting a glance at the smoothskin guards and traders nearby. “Now shove off. You've left your arm on the floor again.”

“Uh...? Oh. Guess I have. Well... can... can I come by later? Get somefin' then?”

“If you have the caps you can,” Ahzrukhal says. “Charon. Escort him out.”

Charon slides off the wall and takes Patchwork by the shoulders.

“Hey! Wasn't... wasn't... a beer? Whiskey? Huh? Oh... hey... Chare... what...” And then the deteriorating ghoul is pushed out the doors with a sharp shove.

“Charon,” Ahzrukhal growls. “The arm, as well?”

His bodyguard pretends not to hear him, stepping delicately over Patchwork's arm as he returns to his spot on the wall.

“ _Charon!_ Are you _deaf?_ The _arm!”_

He raises his eyebrows in response, still playing dumb.

“Get. The arm. And take. It out,” Ahzrukhal forces, through gritted teeth.

Smirking, Charon obeys; there's a distraught wail from Patchwork just outside the Ninth Circle as he watches his unattached arm go sailing over the balcony.

Ahzrukhal sighs.

“Hey, c'mon, shuffler! We've been waiting here for ten minutes already!”

He eyes the trio of smoothskins in the far corner, and pours their tequila with practiced calm. Inside, he is furious. _Shuffler._ How dare they! As if he is the same as the other disgusting creatures in this room. The foul, oozing mutants, who do nothing to try to hide their disease or keep themselves clean—such as the woman in the corner, whose dress is plastered to her body after days of not changing, her fluids crusted through the fabric, a foul, pus-encased garment. It's enough to make him want to vomit.

He is _nothing_ like them.

He delivers their drinks with a charming smile, sliding them to each patron, a small pleasure at seeing the glasses glide over the smooth gloss without a hitch—even if the recipients of the drinks _are_ bastards, he enjoys the display of perfect service.

Not even these three men can find fault with him now, and they mutter their own thanks and drink.

“S'good stuff,” a smoothskin woman slurs on his way back, and gives him a genuine smile as he returns to the bar. He offers her one in return, much more predatory and toothy. She is too drunk to feel fear at what Ahzrukhal knows must be a ghastly expression.

Hearing the door behind him open again, he sighs. _Patchwork..._ again? Most of the time that Ahzrukhal kicks him out, he forgets less than an hour later. The ghoul's probably been huffing spent inhalers.

He turns once he's behind his bar, ready to call out to Charon to throw the rotter _off_ the balcony this time, not just his arm—but it's not Patchwork, it's another smoothskin. A young thing, this time, fresh from the rain, water streaking her cornflower-blue dress, dripping off of the brim of her hat. Not much water, but enough that the acid has left marks on her clothing.

 _She's pretty,_ Ahzrukhal notes, and wonders where she came from. Her clothes are too fine for her to belong with one of the caravans, but she's holding a small suitcase in one hand, so it's clear that she's traveled a ways. Yet... a _suitcase?_ The most difficult of all ways to carry your belongings, and that is what she chose?

She looks at Charon and smiles nervously. “Ahzrukhal?”

Wordlessly, he points. The smoothskin blushes, ducks her head in thanks, and trots up to the bar, looking around wildly before settling her gaze on him. “Ahzrukhal?”

Green eyes, like moss perched on the ragged edge of a waterfall. Lines of slate gray interspersed. Her pupils dilate a little as they look at each other, and Ahzrukhal takes in the acrid smell of her nervous sweat.

“Yes,” he says smoothly. “Do you have business with me?”

“My name's Hazel,” she says timidly, and her fingers twist around the handle of her suitcase. “Did... didn't they send word that I was coming?”

There's another shouted order for drinks, and Ahzrukhal smiles and raises a hand in acknowledgment to them, and looks back at the smoothskin.

“Sit,” he orders, pointing to the bar stool. “I'll speak with you later.”

He largely erases her from his mind for the next hour as he takes care of the patrons, serving drink after drink, haggling for bullet prices, and dishing out Jet on the sly. By the time the majority of the customers leave, caps are weighing down his pockets, and his forehead is slick with sweat.

He's a little surprised to see that she's still waiting for him where he'd asked her to sit. Least that means it isn't anything trivial; smoothskins are notoriously impatient, and so if she is still here, it must be for something at least somewhat important.

He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabs at his temples. “I apologize for your wait. How may I help you?”

“You really don't know who I am?” she asks, and peeks up at him from beneath the brim of her hat. The rain has long-since dried from her clothes, leaving tiny singe-marks. “They told me that you were expecting me.”

He sighs. “No. Are you from one of the caravans?” he asks, although he knows that must not be the case, but where else could this woman have come from, having business with him?

“Oh! Uhm, no... I'm your wife.”

Ahzrukhal flinches.

“Margaret Buxton sent me,” she says, and it all comes back to Ahzrukhal in a sickening rush.

“Ah,” he says. “Yes.”

 _Shit._ He'd completely forgotten—hadn't even _begun_ to prepare—what the hell was he supposed to do with this? A _smoothskin?_ His _wife?_ And he was just supposed to pull all stops and get this woman settled in with him and... what? Make her comfortable, keep her occupied? Was she expecting to sleep in his bed? Would she want to help him with his work?

“Shit,” he mutters, out loud this time, and runs a hand through what remains of his hair. He turns away from her, awkwardly, and glances down the bar at his customers. Unfortunately, it's still too early to kick them out, unless he wants to start losing business.

His wife—“Uhm, what was your name again?” “Hazel.”—is looking more and more fearful, and Ahzrukhal sighs. He stews for a minute, infuriated that the ridiculous _Wastelanders Connect!_ had dropped her off here without so much as a word of warning. He thinks about the card at the bottom of his dresser: _“Meet your true love in less than six months!”_

 _Well. Here she is,_ he thinks sourly. _The love of my fucking life. Those bastards._

It's not Hazel's fault, though, and eventually he'll have to do something to placate her before she bolts in pure terror. He's... not the best-looking of the ghouls, despite his efforts; he was not young when he was ghoulified, and his body is less quick to regenerate than a younger ghoul—his face peels where gangrene has set in, and it's a malady that runs all over his body, beneath his clothes, across his back, sidling up to blisters and burns.

_What the hell was I thinking?_

He sighs. “Charon. Watch the bar. Usual rules—don't let anyone steal, don't converse with anyone. I'll be back in a few moments.”

He nods to Hazel, motioning for her to stand, and picks up her suitcase for her. It is lighter than he expected. “Come with me.”

The smoothskin runs her hands over her skirt once, shifts her hat, and follows, biting her lip. The sight is... oddly erotic. _His wife._ No. He shakes his head, grimacing. Wife or not, she's... probably not ready for anything that a man would be interested in, especially not one such as him. And despite his cutthroat business practices, he's not the sort of man to force himself on a woman.

No. This was all a mistake. To have this girl with him now... it was one thing to write on paper that he'd only accept a young, virgin smoothskin, but to see her in front of him... knowing that no man has ever been between her legs... It's tempting, of course, but it makes him much more anxious than it arouses him. _What the hell was I thinking?_ As soon as that vile Ms. Buxton arrives again, he's going to insist that they take her back. Forget the loss of one thousand caps—he just wants her away from him.

He doesn't like the way she looks at him. Even now, past the rot of his skin, past the stomach-turning scent of ripe flesh, he can smell the sharp tang of fear in her sweat.

They come to a halt outside a set of doors, and Ahzrukhal pushes through reluctantly, holding the door for his bride. Hazel looks at him with some distress before entering.

Ahzrukhal clears his throat, loudly, and puts his hands in his pockets. He glances around the room critically, eyeing the dirt on the walls. Cleaner than his bar. Hm. He'll have to do something about that.

“Oh! Uhm... Ahzrukhal.”

His gaze wanders a little while longer before coming to rest on that disgusting, rotting face of the old bitch who set up shop across the balcony. _Carol._ And he takes a deep breath.

“I need a favor.”

The ghoul blinks, and she wipes her hands on her apron. “My, my. Who would have thought that old Ahzrukhal would stoop to seek me out, hm? Now, what can I do for you?”

Oh, she's going to _love_ this. Probably go have a laugh at him later with her coarse bitch of a partner Greta once he's gone.

“I need you to look after someone for me,” he growls, feeling foolish. “This is Hazel, my... well. I need her to stay with you. Possibly long-term. Please.”

Carol blinks again, and looks at Hazel, who fixes the older woman with an earnest expression. _What does Carol see there?_ he wonders. _Desperation? Pleading?_

“Are you looking to negotiate on the price of her stay?” Carol asks, frowning. “You know that it's one hundred and twenty caps per night-”

Hazel flinches, and Ahzrukhal's eyes narrow.

“We can work out the particulars later,” he says firmly. “But she was entrusted to my care, and I think... that she would prefer female company and a...” he grits his teeth, “...more cheerful atmosphere to the Ninth Circle's gloom and having only Charon and myself for companions.”

Carol smirks at this. “I can't argue with that,” she scoffs. “Your bar is no place for a proper woman... and certainly not any proper men, either.”

Ahzrukhal does not reply, and her eyes gleam in smug victory as she takes in his rigid visage. _Shit._ The bitch is going to milk him for all he's worth, bleed him dry until the Ninth Circle is a ghost of its former self.

But what else can be done? Ahzrukhal may be cruel, but he is proud, and his pride would never allow someone to come to harm while in his care. What kind of reflection would that be on him if his supposed _wife_ was frightened or lonely?

Grimacing, he thinks again, _I never should have done this._

Carol has switched attention from Ahzrukhal to Hazel, with a genuine smile for the girl. “Now, how are you, dearie? Are you hungry? My name's Carol, and the lovely lady in the back is my wife Greta. You need anything at all, you let us know, alright? Let's get you settled in...”

He breathes a sigh of relief, and leaves the suitcase on the floor. One less thing to worry about now; he has no doubts that Carol will do her best to take care of his wife. Carol has always been soft on smoothskins, especially the young ones. Something about her son... Gob, was it? Rushing back and forth to keep them happy and fed, chattering on about how adorable they were, how she missed her boy. Likely will do the same for Hazel.

He's gone without a word of goodbye, brow furrowed in irritation, headed back to his thriving bar. Over and over, the same question repeats in his mind: _Now what do I do?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I also write from Hazel's POV? Let me know in the comments.


	3. Broken Vessel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hazel reflects on her marriage.

“Let's get you settled in...”

Hazel casts a desperate glance behind her, trying to meet Ahzrukhal's gaze, but he's already walking away, and does not turn around. He pushes out through the doors and is lost from view.

Carol is still chattering. “I'm sure you'll love it here, dearie, and if there's anything I can do to help you enjoy your stay, you just tell me. Well, let's see. I usually have three spare beds... which do you want? This one, it's closer to Greta and I, so if you might need something in the middle of the night it'll be easier to get to us, but... maybe you want a little more privacy, hm? What do you think?”

Hazel, caught off-guard, doesn't respond in the first two seconds and Carol takes that as a sign that she's not going to speak at all.

“Well, we can figure that out later,” Carol says. “I'll set your bag down here, and you go have a seat at the table, alright? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Uhm,” Hazel says, finally given a proper chance to speak. “Do you have Nuka-Cola?”

“Of course!” Carol bustles off towards the kitchen, where Hazel can see the motherly ghoul pause to murmur something to another woman standing over the stove, and the woman turns around to fix her with a filmy-eyed stare. She flinches at the sight of her, the ruined face and lipless mouth, the yellow teeth partially visible beneath. The teeth push into view a little more as she bares them in a spiteful grin.

Hazel shudders, and the woman turns back to Carol to mutter something in reply. Carol only laughs, takes a Nuka from the fridge, and sets it down on Hazel's table. She sits down across from her with a sigh; she moves and creaks and groans like an arthritic grandmother.

“So,” Carol says, finally slowing down to truly look at Hazel, “I have to ask. How on earth did a sweet girl like you get involved with Ahzrukhal?”

Hazel startles, wondering how on earth Carol knew that they were _involved_ when the ghoul continues, “Are you perhaps a relative of his?”

She lets out a shaky laugh. “No, not quite like that. Uhm... I owe him.”

Carol's eyes widen. “Oh, honey...”

“Again, not like you're thinking,” Hazel says, wondering what sort of reputation Ahzrukhal must have to have garnered such a horrified and pitying reaction from Carol at this news. “He... he helped me. He didn't need to, but he did anyway.”

She wonders if she should tell Carol that they're married. He'd stopped before he said it, so maybe he doesn't want people to know for some reason? Technically, given all the paperwork that Ahzrukhal filled out, yes, they're a married couple; one of the documents that _Wastelanders Connect!_ had brought along for her was a Vault-Tech marriage license, already signed by him in advance; all she had to do was add her own signature, and she was a married woman without having even met the man.

When she'd added her signature, she'd had some doubts, of course. She _knew_ he was a ghoul, but it was something else entirely to see him. To meet him, and to have him ignore her like she was lesser than all of his drunken customers. And then kick her out.

Carol hums. “Well, well. That's interesting. I didn't know that Ahzrukhal had a selfless bone in his body.”

Hazel blinks. Sure, the man was old and rotting and intimidating as hell, but he had been very polite to her for the most part, if you ignored the part where he seemed overly eager to be rid of her. “Is he really that bad? I've only just met him today.”

“Oh, honey... he's the most crooked man in DC. Selfish, as I'd said, as well as cruel, cunning, and ruthless. Nothing's too low for him.” Carol looks around, gulps, and then whispers, “Greta has had attempts on her life over the years. On and off. Sometimes poison, sometimes an assault in the late evening. It's always smoothskin drifters who do it. There's no proof... but I swear that Ahzrukhal is responsible.”

Hazel trembles, squeezing her eyes shut. _No. No, it can't be. I can't be married to him._

She asks, “Why would he want to kill Greta?”

“We're competition,” Carol says simply. “We don't have the same services, of course, but it's enough to make him want us to shut down. The man's power-hungry. He can't stand not controlling every aspect of Underworld, and for him to have the two of us taking business from him...”

“You don't think he would try to kill _me,_ right?” Hazel honestly has no idea. She was assured over and over that Ahzrukhal was the perfect man for her, that the personality tests never fail, that she'd be happy, that their services have a ninety-sevent percent success rate—but what if that was a lie? And if not, what if she was one of the three percent who were met with disaster?

What if Ahzrukhal only bought her freedom so that he could have another person to toy with?

It's not that far-fetched of an idea. She has nowhere to go. She has no weapons, no possessions save the contents of her suitcase and the clothes on her back, and nearly all of that was given to her by Margaret Buxton. If she leaves, she'd die out in the wastelands within the first day. Even if she managed to get back to Megaton...

The thought of what's waiting for her there makes her shudder with terror.

Carol bites the inside of her mouth, and forces a smile. “I'm sure that won't happen, darling. You're a pretty girl, and you're not any kind of threat to him.”

She nods, not wholly convinced. Clears her throat. “Tell me more about him?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well...” Hazel pauses, and wrinkles her nose. “Why is he rotting so much more than the other ghouls?”

 _Gangrene._ Hazel had only seen it once before, in the Vault, when Jonas'd had a seizure and fallen unconscious, in his bedroom. He'd laid in there for two days before they broke down the door, and he'd landed in a way that completely cut off circulation to his leg. Despite her daddy's efforts, the flesh began to necrotise. He'd had the flesh amputated above the knee. If they hadn't amputated, he would have died.

The memory of its fetid reek has never left her.

Carol pauses, and then says, “Oh, yes, I forget that you smoothskins have much better senses of smell than we do. Mm, there _have_ been complaints about him before. Well... it's simple enough. He's the oldest ghoul here.”

Hazel flinches. Oldest. Ghoul. Here. She's _nineteen years old,_ and Ahzrukhal is... is... “How old is that?”

“Oh... well over two hundred, of course, he's pre-War. I am too, but I was a child when I turned, but Ahzrukhal... he was... fifty? Sixty, maybe?” Carol shrugs. “His body is simply too old to be able to regenerate as quickly as the rest of us.”

 _Shit._ Hazel massages her temples, taking off her hat and leaving it on the table, and nods. _Well. Nothing I can do about it now. The marriage agreement has already been signed._

And now she's married to a two-hundred-and-sixty year-old zombie.

 

* * *

 

Hazel isn't sure what to do. After switching speaking of lighter pleasantries with Carol, the ghoul suggests that she get some rest, so after casting the door an anxious glance, she hastily changes into the lace and silk babydoll nightwear that Ms. Buxton had supplied her with. The older woman had unfolded it with a bright smile, telling her that 'a proper wife should be outfitted with only the best nighttime lingerie' and that her 'new husband would love it'.

Well, he's not here to see it, and Hazel isn't sure if she should be thankful for that or not. She _mostly_ is, but on the other hand, he _is_ her husband, right? It makes her nervous that he doesn't seem to like her or want her at all.

Maybe he really _is_ planning on offing her.

“Hazel?” Carol calls, and rounds the corner past her privacy screen. Her eyes widen, and Hazel blushes at having to be seen in such an itty-bitty nightie.

“I, uhm.” Hazel touches the hem. “These were the only nightclothes I brought, so...”

“You look so adorable!” Carol cries. “Is that real silk? That's so expensive! Is it pre-War?”

Hazel shakes her head. “Ms. Buxton had me fitted for it. Uhm, she's my... uhm, benefactor.”

“My,” Carol says admiringly. “I've never seen something so fine in my entire life. It's impractical for sure though. I didn't know folks still wore nightclothes. Most people just sleep in their armor or daywear.”

Hazel starts; she had no idea. Back in the Vault, she's always had nightclothes. Vault-issue, of course, loose blue dresses with the numbers 101 across the back, but there had been others, too, white ones and pink ones and cheetah-print. The latter she'd received from Amata for her twelfth birthday.

Carol lowers her voice. “You're not an, uhm...”

Hazel stares uncomprehendingly.

“...a... well. Forget it, I shouldn't pry, it was rude of me to ask.” The ghoul turns away— _is she blushing?—_ and Hazel says, “No, what did you want to know?”

“Uhm,” Carol says, not looking at her, “usually consorts or... _ladies of the night..._ wear clothes like that. And since you said you were indebted... I thought maybe...”

“Heavens no!” Hazel cries, blushing just as hard as the ghoul, and blurts, “I'm a virgin!”

The two stare at each other.

“Well,” Hazel adds with an awkward giggle, “that was probably a little more than you needed to know. The truth is... I'm on my way to meet my husband. I'm... married... it was arranged, and, well...”

“Ahh,” Carol says knowingly. “A little old-fashioned, but it happens now and then. Especially between different towns to keep the gene pool diverse... I've heard about that from other smoothskins."

"Oh. They do?"

"Mm, yes, of course. I think there are a few agencies, mercs, mostly, who act as bridal escort services. It can be very dangerous to travel, especially with a man or a woman who can't fight! You're lucky you got here in one piece."

"...yes," Hazel agrees hesitantly. "The one I went with is very highly-rated."

"So! Your husband! Have you met him yet?”

Hazel frowns, thinking of Ahzrukhal's polite but chilly demeanor.

“No,” she says, “I don't think so.”

 

* * *

 

Wearing the pink silk robe that she'd discovered in her suitcase along with two other dresses, Hazel peeks out the double doors to Carol's Place. There are a few ghouls still wandering around, despite the late hour... should she chance it?

No one's looking up... she curls her toes and looks down at her bare feet. _Is it rude to walk around here barefoot? Is my robe too short?_ She has no idea what the social rules are here. Back in the Vault, everyone was more or less like one big family, so it wasn't unusual to see old Mrs. Palmer in her bathrobe for the course of the day. If she never got around to changing into her Vault suit, who cared? She was retired. She was _family._ No one batted an eye. And there'd been a whole week when she was seven that her and Amata had worn their nightclothes and nothing else, refusing to change even for class.

 _Mr. Brotch had been so mad at us..._ Hazel sighs, and steps out. _Well, here goes nothing._

Unfortunately, the door shuts behind her with a low boom, and she winces—the ghoul mechanic that hovers around the entrance looks up at her and stares, and the ghoul in the middle of the balcony grins in her direction. She can't _actually_ tell if he's looking at her because he's wearing sunglasses.

Nervously, she makes her way towards the ghoul; she has to get by him if she wants to visit the Ninth Circle.

To her chagrin, his grinning leer follows her from Carol's Place—she's just passing him by, beginning to breathe a sigh of relief that he isn't stopping her when he speaks.

“Hey, baby, love the get-up. Though, I like the locks more.”

Hazel freezes and blinks at him. “Uhm. What?”

“Name's Snowflake. I'm a hair stylist—well, I used to be, anyway. But I'm not rusty yet! You need a haircut? Or... maybe an updo? Curls would look good on you, babe, maybe you should go for those.”

“Uh.” Hazel laughs, startled but relieved. “You... want to do my hair?”

“Yeah, yeah!” the ghoul says, enthused. “These corpses only got half a head of the stuff, so I never get a chance to work on a full head! C'mon! No charge!”

She eyes him. "None at all?"

"Nope, none! I'll do whatever you want, too! Cuts, curls, styling, straightening, you name it!"

Hazel laughs again, pleased. “Alright. Tomorrow?”

The ghoul brightens up immensely. “You—you mean it?”

“Mm,” Hazel agrees. “I _love_ having my hair done. I never thought... out in the Wastes like this...”

She pauses. "Out..."

Her voice is choking up for some reason, and she tries clearing her throat, a bit startled to find that her throat is tight.

“...to do my hair again...” she tries, and falls silent.

She's embarrassed to find that she's tearing up.

Snowflake coughs. “Uh... you okay?”

Angrily, she wipes away her tears and warbles, “My best friend Amata... we used to do each other's hair... and I don't know if I'll ever see her again...”

“Uhm,” Snowflake says, and holds out his arms. “I'm a ghoul, but...”

She rushes into him and he lets out a small _oof_ as she slams against his chest, nearly knocking the man off-balance. He smells... nice. A massive amount of cologne masks the scent of rot and disease, and he's broad and warm and a little bit muscular. It reminds her of her dad and she begins openly sobbing into his collared shirt.

“Hey, hey,” Snowflake says. “It's okay.”

“I miss her,” she cries. “My friends and my dad, they're gone, everyone's gone...”

“Shh,” he murmurs. “I know.”

“I used to stay with her overnight,” she sobs, clutching his shirt, and he tightens his arms around her, pulling her close. She shifts her face, accidentally wiping her tears onto the triangle of flesh between the lapels of his shirt, but he doesn't seem to mind. His skin is rough and bumpy and uneven, a map of scars and burns, but... it makes her feel just a little bit closer, and that helps her relax. “We'd comb each other's hair for hours, and... I'd fall asleep... I _miss her!”_ she finishes with a wail.

“I know,” Snowflake says again. “Believe me, baby, I know.”

She sniffs. “You... you do?”

“Rivet City, born and raised, honey,” he says. “Got sent here three years ago. Once you turn into a ghoul, well, there's no going back. I've got a lot of friends that I haven't seen in a long time, too. Family. They're all back there, and besides getting mail once in awhile from my parents, _nada._ It's not the greatest.”

She shudders from the strain of her tears, and nods. “My mom's dead,” she whispers, “and my dad is missing.”

“Common enough story,” Snowflake says, and rubs her back. “Hey. You okay now?”

She nods and pulls away, horrified to see that she's left a mess of tears on his shirt as well as a trail of snot, still connecting from her nose to his chest. She wipes it away, humiliated, but Snowflake only laughs.

“Don't sweat it, kiddo,” the ghoul says. “Been too long since I've had someone leaking all over me. Ghouls aren't very emotional, you know? Except Carol, but that's just how she is. So, uh, thanks. Makes me feel human again.”

“Close enough,” she says, “right?”

He laughs. “Most people'd disagree with you there. Once I... changed, no one from Rivet City would let me touch 'em anymore. I offered to wear a mask and gloves, if only they'd let me stay on as a stylist, but... didn't exactly work out. They don't want ghouls inside at all, even if they're folks they've known their entire lives.”

“What about your parents?”

He shrugs and smiles. “They wanted me to stay. Be pretty bad parents if they didn't, right? My sister cried and cried. Kinda traumatizing.”

Hazel wipes her face again, and tries to smile back. “Thanks.”

“Anytime, babe. You... uh, you still on for tomorrow?”

“Definitely,” she says. “As long as you don't mind putting up with a leaky, overemotional smoothskin.”

She doesn't voice the extent of it. Just how much she had cried in Moriarty's Saloon, first over her beer, then in her bed. Crying again after she'd taken the loan from the man because she was too scared to go back into the wastelands, too scared to go back to the Common House where that one lout had almost raped her. She had no money, no friends, and no means to make either.

Moriarty had been pushing at her to become a prostitute when Ms. Buxton showed up. They'd paid him some nominal amount to keep him placated, and a bit more money to keep her there, and then after a few weeks, they'd shipped her down to Atlanta to stay in their hotel to have her measurements taken, and to get some wifely training.

Not all of the ladies got the same treatment, but since she was a virgin, they told her that she'd be matched with a very wealthy man. That they were still sorting through the files, but that they had 'some strong indication of the most suitable man'. She'd only been there for two months before she knew his name, and then another two months spent relaxing and training.

But she'd cried then, too, in fear of what might happen if she somehow failed, if she was sent back to Moriarty's cruel fury, and cried for her poor daddy, who was still missing and likely dead.

And she'd cried in fear of her new unmet husband, a ghoul, and what _he_ might do to _her._ If he would be kind or cruel. Gentle or forceful. If he'd want to sleep with her on their first night, or if he'd be nice enough to wait.

“Don't you worry,” Snowflake grins. “It's okay to cry. Even us ghouls cry sometime, right? Listen, I'll make you so pretty that you won't even think about anything bad. Okay?”

“Okay,” Hazel agrees, although her voice is still a little quavery. She turns around with a sigh.

Ahzrukhal is watching them, his hands by his sides. He's got a look on his face that tells Hazel all that she needs to know.

He's seen and heard everything.

 


	4. Disappointment

Ahzrukhal honestly isn't sure what he's walked in upon. Is his wife meeting up with a friend? It's entirely possible that she's met Snowflake before, given that he's freshly-turned. He's from Rivet City; he wouldn't be surprised if Hazel came from the same town.

“Don't sweat it, kiddo,” the ghoul is saying. “Been too long since I've had someone leaking all over me. Ghouls aren't very emotional, you know? Except Carol, but that's just how she is. So, uh, thanks. Makes me feel human again.”

“Close enough,” his wife replies, and Ahzrukhal frowns at the tremor to her voice. “Right?”

“Most people'd disagree with you there,” Snowflake says with a laugh. “Once I... changed, no one from Rivet City would let me touch 'em anymore. I offered to wear a mask and gloves, if only they'd let me stay on as a stylist, but... didn't exactly work out. They don't want ghouls inside at all, even if they're folks they've known their entire lives.”

Ahzrukhal has to hold back a sneer; he certainly wouldn't want Snowflake to touch him, whether or not the man was a ghoul. He's always been disgusted by the platinum-haired junkie, that vain man obsessed with hair to the point of a fetish.

“What about your parents?” Hazel asks. Apparently _she_ isn't put off by him.

“They wanted me to stay. Be pretty bad parents if they didn't, right? My sister cried and cried. Kinda traumatizing.”

“...Thanks,” Hazel says at last.

Ahzrukhal edges forward.

“Anytime, babe. You... uh, you still on for tomorrow?”

He startles. _Babe?_ Snowflake isn't... he isn't trying to _seduce her,_ is he? _Who the hell does he think he is?_ He wonders furiously. _Some kinda goddamn Casanova? Just because he still has all of his hair...?_

But his wife fucking goes for it.

“Definitely,” she says. “As long as you don't mind putting up with a leaky, overemotional smoothskin.”

She sounds... happy.

Ahzrukhal clenches his fist, and he's so engrossed in his own thoughts that he misses the last bit of their exchange—it's only when Hazel turns around that he sees her face and realizes that she has been crying.

It explains the quaver to her voice. She has clearly been sobbing very hard; her face is red and swollen, streaked with tears and snot. An eyelash is stuck to her cheek.

“Hazel,” he says, stepping forward, and then stops about six feet short of her. “Did something happen?”

What he's really thinking is, _Did Carol...?_ If his wife has said anything to that ghoul bitch about their relationship, he wouldn't be surprised if she's kicked her out or done something nasty just to spite him.

 _Or, perhaps..._ Perhaps she's done something else. Told her rumors about him, or worse yet, _truths._

Ahzrukhal can smell her fear undercutting the scent of her crying.

“Oh,” she whispers, and hastily scrubs at her face. “No, I'm fine. Just... everything sort of hit me all at once.”

He hesitates. His instincts tell him to force her to come with him, to drag her away from Snowflake's leer, but perhaps as her husband he should be a bit more cordial. He pushes off the feeling. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she says.

“And you certainly look it,” Ahzrukhal says dryly, since her lower lip is still trembling on and off. “Come with me, and I'll give you something to steady you.”

“No, I'm fine,” she insists. “Really. I think I just need some sleep.”

He takes a breath, fighting off irritation—she is obviously _not_ okay, and she really _should_ have something to calm her down—maybe a glass of brandy, but it's clear that she does not intend to go with him unless he forces her.

It's at that point that he realizes what she's wearing. A silk pink robe, light and shiny, the color of a rose's blush, cutting off right at her knees, leaving her legs bare. She's barefoot, and her toes are red from the chill of the marble floor.

He says, suddenly intent on getting her away from Snowflake, “At least allow me to escort you back to your room.”

“Alright,” Hazel agrees, and shivers.

“Come,” he orders again, stretching out an arm and nodding to Carol's Place. His hand hovers near her arm, but he's careful not to touch her. Poor thing would probably jump out of her skin if she touched him; she already cringes if he so much as looks at her.

He tries not to look down at her calves when he checks to make sure she is following. _Beautiful._ Her skin is pale and flawless. White as cream, unmarked. The robe cuts off just above her knees, and he can see flashes of her thighs through the slit of her robe when she takes a step forward. He does not watch her lustfully; he is too admiring, feeling like a man watching a personification of _The Birth of Venus._

Carol is not in sight when he holds the door for her, _thank god for small mercies._ He stops, ready to turn back, but then he takes another look at her cold feet and decides to make sure she at least puts on slippers.

“You should not walk barefoot on these cold floors,” he admonishes. “Underworld has poor air quality, and it would be too easy for you to fall ill.”

“I'm fine,” Hazel says again, sitting on her bed. She looks up at him, tucking her feet underneath her calves. The edge of her robe slips down her thigh, exposing the inner part of her leg all the way up to a wide piece of lace that barely extends past the cleft of her legs. His eyes widen and he looks away hurriedly. _Was that all she was wearing underneath?_ He honestly can't tell whether it's a skirt, or the edging of her undergarments.

“Ahzrukhal?”

“Uh, yes,” he manages, hoping that she did not notice where his eyes were a moment before.

“Are you... disappointed with me?”

He blinks. His gaze dips down to her bare thighs for a split second, and then he drags it up to her face. “Excuse me?”

“You're a bit more distant than what I expected, I guess,” she says. “You're not even having me stay with you. I thought...”

What, exactly, _had_ she thought? That he was _disappointed_ with her? With _what?_ Her beauty? Her shy grace? Blushing kindness? Every piece of her calls to him. Calls too strongly, in fact, and it disgusts him, the way he is entranced by her.

She's too good for him. They're too different, worlds apart. A blushing virgin and a callous bartender, a shy beauty and a corrupt ghoul. His element is in the rot and filth of this place, and hers... she belongs in the sunlight, some distant settlement with high walls and turrets. Far away from the DC bloodbath.

What had Margaret Buxton been thinking, matching them? What had _he_ been thinking, allowing himself to be taken in by that witch, to spend so many caps on an impossibility?

Hazel is still waiting for an answer.

_You want an answer, smoothskin? I'll give you an answer._

The ragged edges of his lips pull apart in a sneer. “Disappointed with you? You might say so. Look at you. You can barely speak loud enough for me to hear you, and you can't even look me in the eye for more than a second. You think I want a mouse for a wife? Disappointed doesn't even _cover_ it. The moment Ms. Buxton returns, I'm sending you back with her.”

Hazel's eyes widen, and he know that he's hurt her. _Good._ She should leave him alone after this. She shrinks back slightly, and her shoulders touch the wall.

He snorts, as if that only emphasized his point, turns, and stalks away, fuming. Angry with himself for frightening his bride, angry at Ms. Buxton that she's here to be frightened at all.

Something cold and unfeeling in his chest begins to ache.

 

* * *

 

Upon his return to the Ninth Circle, he pours himself a glass of brandy and takes a seat, allowing himself to slouch a little. _Dammit, what a mess._ He feels terrible.

 _I shouldn't have said the things that I did,_ he muses, pouring a second glass, and then shrugs. _But what else could I have said? Told her that I didn't think it would work out? Tell her that ghouls and smoothskins just aren't meant to be?_

 _Worse yet, tell her how I_ really _feel?_ Because the truth is, he wants her. And not even in a particularly lustful way; it's not that he _wants_ her, he wants _her._ Wants her to smile at him. Wants her to bring light to his darkness. Wants her acceptance. Wants someone sweet and kind who will give herself to him wholeheartedly, without him having to fear that she'll blackmail him or try to claim favors.

He can even see her doing it, that's what makes his blood boil. He can see her with any number of faceless men, loving them with all her heart. But not him. Not Ahzrukhal. He's embittered and dangerous, and someone as soft-hearted as Hazel could never fit into his lifestyle.

He blinks, thoughtfully, and motions Charon over to his table.

“Yes, master,” Charon says dutifully. Ahzrukhal can see the hatred simmering in his eyes.

“Tell Snowflake that I want a word with him.”

“Very well.”

The lumbering ghoul exits, and then within a few moments, a shaken-looking hair stylist is walking into the empty Ninth Circle. He offers Ahzrukhal a somewhat nervous smile.

“Hey, Azzie, what's this about? I hope it's nothing to do with the Jet-”

Ahzrukhal motions, and Charon slams the stylist's head into the table.

 _“Ah!_ Ouch, hell, what the fuck-”

Charon presses down harder, and Snowflake quiets. Ahzrukhal remains seated, leaning back now, considering the man before him. _What a disgusting, pathetic creature._

“Snowflake,” he says calmly. “How nice of you to join me.”

“Yeah, shit-”

Charon grinds Snowflake's face into the table again, cutting him off. Ahzrukhal can see the coldness in Charon's face, the grim and twisted satisfaction that the beast takes from inflicting pain. He thinks that it's one of the few things that makes the half-feral ghoul happy.

“Talking will not be necessary,” Ahzrukhal says, waving a hand. “At least not right now. What I need is for you to listen.”

He waits until the stylist is looking at him, blue eyes tearing up from pain, and continues, “I couldn't help but notice that you were bothering the smoothskin this evening. Talking to her. Badgering her.”

A pause. Snowflake, wisely, says nothing.

“Let me tell you something. Hazel might seem like she's free. Debtless. Perhaps, depending on your intentions... _vulnerable._ I'm going to tell you that that's not the case. And you had best be listening well. Hazel is _mine._ She belongs to me. And if you so much as look at her again, I'm going to tear the scalp off of your head and throw it to the Super Mutants.”

Snowflake trembles.

Ahzrukhal studies his face for a moment, then leans back and lights a Salem. Takes in a deep breath, feeling the rattle of phlegm in his chest, and breathes out a cloud of smoke over the table.

“And, Snowflake, I believe you know what I do to people who take what is mine. If you think you're brave enough, or _besotted_ enough, you might even be bold enough to try taking advantage of her. If you do? I think I'll give you a week alone with Charon out in the wastes. And you won't be coming back.”

Charon grins at this, humorlessly. Eyes as cold as shark-infested waters.

“Understand?”

“Yes,” Snowflake croaks, and Charon releases him. The stylist stands up, giving the bodyguard an angry but frightened look, and brushes himself off, attempting to cover his panic.

“But,” the stylist says.

“But?”

“She wants me to do her hair.”

Ahzrukhal has to admit, he _is_ impressed that the other ghoul is brave enough to argue. The man has balls, he'll give him that.

“Very well,” Ahzrukhal agrees, “but if I ever see you approaching her yourself, or spending more time with her than I deem appropriate... well...”

He smiles, and he knows that the expression is just as cold as Charon's.

“I'll leave that to your imagination.”

 


	5. Long Nights and Lonely Tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exposition.

Hazel curls up underneath her covers, and cries silently. By now, it's habit. Since leaving the Vault, she's spent more nights crying than not. It's to the extent that even if she is not sad, she'll fall asleep with tear tracks tracing gentle lines down her cheeks.

But this time? This time, she sobs out of fear and misery. What had she been thinking, asking Ahzrukhal about his innermost thoughts? Asking him his opinion of her? She had really just been asking to be humiliated.

But... the crux of the situation... the thing that keeps swirling around in her head and heart, over and over... _He's going to send me back._ She disappointed him. She wasn't pleasing to him. He was going to send her away and she was going to end up back at the gates of Megaton. Penniless and starving, as she had been all those months ago. Back to that dark saloon with the raspy-voiced ghoul and the sympathetic prostitute.

Back to Moriarty.

The shivering overtakes her. Terror uncoils from the pit of her stomach, and she fists her hands in the sheets and draws them over her head. She lets it reign over her, eating her alive. She isn't strong enough to push it away.

She knows what's waiting for her there. Prostitution and slavery. Being sold night after night to strangers and drifters. Moriarty had threatened her at every turn. First dropping honeyed hints about her need to pay him back, then escalating to terse demands. That was when she'd begun trying to avoid him, but he sought her out, his voice becoming more and more forceful. He'd told her about what happened to people who couldn't pay him back.

And Gob and Nova had kept their heads down, giving her sympathetic glances while Moriarty whispered atrocities wrapped in a sweet tone. All the things he was going to do to her. All the things that hundreds of men would do to her.

At last she'd broken down and told him that she was a virgin, begging him to stay his hand. And he had. He'd quieted, and would watch her with a charged thoughtfulness. Thinking. Planning.

Margaret Buxton had arrived just in time to save her.

But now? She would go back. She had not been saved from her fate; it had only been delayed. She didn't know what Moriarty had been planning for her, but now... now...

Hazel wonders if there's any way that she can convince Ahzrukhal to change his mind.

She lays there in darkness, scrubbing her face and thinking, until she hears Carol sit up from her creaky bed and pad over to her trunk. Listens to her dressing, and then, finally, sits up when she hears the sounds of Greta making breakfast.

She has no idea if she's slept at all.

Dragging herself out of bed is torture, but she'd rather be up and eating something than laying in her bed any longer. Her head aches from the lumpy pillow. She misses the threadbare but fluffy pillow she'd had back in the vault. Fabric stained from generations of vault dwellers sleeping upon it, but it was something comforting, familiar—the way that she could shove a fist into the clumps of polyester and rearrange it without even waking up.

“Good morning, dearie, did you sleep well?” Carol is setting the tables in the center of the room; the doors at the front are still firmly closed and locked, the business closed for the moment; she turns and halts when Hazel doesn't reply. Her lips purse at Hazel's puffy eyelids and reddened face, but she doesn't comment.

“I...” Hazel doesn't want to lie, so she shakes her head and says, instead, “It was very comfortable. Thank you.”

The pillow had given her a headache, but she thinks that that's mostly due to the crying. Given time, she'll get used to it... if Ahzrukhal lets her stay for any length of time, that is.

She wonders when Ms. Buxton will be coming back.

“You're welcome, dearie,” Carol says, her voice gone soft and a little less raspy. “How about some tea? Get something warm into your belly.”

Hazel agrees, and she watches the ghoul walk back into the kitchen. She doesn't look terribly old, not worn-down like Ahzrukhal, and she wonders how old the other woman is. And Greta. Although, she never would have expected Ahzrukhal to be pre-War. Is there a way to tell? Some sort of signal based on the condition of their skin, the coloring? There's some ghouls who are reddened and inflamed; yellow and withered; green and rotting, like Ahzrukhal. She wonders if those are the stages. Or if it's something else that she doesn't know about altogether. Maybe it has something to do with their environment.

She asks Carol as much when she returns, and the other ghoul is kind enough not to laugh. The older woman sits with a quiet grunt, reaches forward and pats Hazel's hand. “Why, no, sweetie, I'm nearly the same age as Ahzrukhal himself. I was turned when I was a little girl, though, and Ahzrukhal was well into his senior years. There's no good way to tell a ghoul's age, other than their mannerisms. Pre-War ghouls tend to be stuck in the past, holding onto a life that no one else remembers. They're often cleaner, too, used to better times. That's something about that old crook I can't complain about... he's always impeccably dressed.”

Hazel thinks back on seeing him yesterday, how he prowled around the tables in his bar, serving up drinks and that razor-edged smile. Carol's right. She hadn't been looking much at his clothes, more focused on examining the scars and wounds and sunken lines crossing his face and hands, but he had been wearing a suit, hadn't he? A nice one. Yes, she remembers it now, how she'd watched him pull the handkerchief from his breast pocket to clean himself before he presented himself to her. A perfect gentleman.

If only he _acted_ the part, instead of just looking it.

Greta joins them, then, and Hazel quits brooding. She's uneasy around Carol's wife. Greta seems just as unpleasant as Ahzrukhal, that hint of _wrongness_ lurking beneath. A sense that she senses Hazel's anxiety and revels in it. She wonders how Carol doesn't notice it, the disgust she seems to have for Hazel, if she's just blinded to her wife's enmity, or if she just doesn't care enough to do anything about it.

If Carol notices Hazel's spike in fear, she doesn't say anything, just smiles at her wife. Greta pecks her on the lips before seating herself, and dishes up a platter of casserole on each of their plates. The domesticity of it makes the hair on the back of her neck rise.

Hazel eyes it apprehensively. She wouldn't be surprised if Greta had put something foul in her portion, for no other reason than spite. The ghoul doesn't seem to like her for some reason. _It wouldn't be because I'm a human, would it?_

“Eat up, dearie,” Carol says, glancing at her plate, “it's nothing distasteful. Raven eggs, molerat meat, and some scavenged tinned vegetables. I asked Greta to cook something special, just for you.”

Greta smiles unpleasantly.

Hazel cuts out a portion tentatively, looking at the flaky piece pinned to the tines of her fork. Carol's right. It _looks_ good, but does that really mean anything? With the way that Greta is staring at her...

She takes a bite and regrets it immediately. It's not fouled, nothing is rotten—she wouldn't expect Greta to do something like that, not when her food is in the same pan as the ghouls'—but it's filled with molerat gristle. A hard piece suddenly hits her teeth, and she gags. _Well. Now I know where all the joints and tendons went. And fat. God, please kill me now._

She prays harder for death when she sees the happy and expectant look on Carol's face.

Hazel forces herself to swallow, despite the bile in her throat, and manages, “It's delicious.”

Carol beams.

She doesn't look at Greta, not wanting to see the cruel triumph on the other woman's face, no doubt contorting the already nightmarish features, so she stares down at her plate and picks at it. She's able to get rid of the worst of the nastiness, but there are some tiny pieces that escape her notice and squeak against her teeth.

The joints are the worst. _God,_ are they the worst. Hard enough to jar her mouth, soft enough to squish in her mouth and turn her stomach. It would be one thing if she could chew them, but they're _joints._ She has to fight down her meal, or risk offending Carol.

With Ahzrukhal as her only recourse, she doesn't want to try that.

God, what would that even look like, her asking for help from him? Would he even listen to her? Would he just ask his bodyguard to force her out of the bar?  _Well... he_ did  _ask that I be treated well. Maybe, if this nastiness gets bad enough, I'll ask him for help. But what kind of woman would be this petty, anyway? What did I ever do to her to make her hate me so much?_

The tea, at least, was made by Carol, so that's safe. When Carol asks if she isn't feeling well, due to her half-full plate, she hastily agrees and allows the ghoul to clear her plate. She's glad that she can fill up on tea. It doesn't do much for her hunger, but it's certainly better than nothing.

“So, what is there to do around here?” Hazel asks tentatively. If she were welcomed by Ahzrukhal, she'd consider asking him about what she could do. _Maybe clean. His bar could do with a touch-up._ But with him pushing her away...

Back in the vault, there was always a lot to do. Chores, cooking, the ever-present repairs. Fixing Pip-Boys, welding holes into the walls where radroaches had tunneled in, training physical fitness in the rare but terrifying case of a radscorpion attack. Mrs. Palmer used to do a lot of embroidery. There was a fairly-decent sized library there, and people could spend their credits on using one of the terminals to play 8-bit games or mess around with the word processor for a few hours. There were a lot of musical instruments in storage, too, that no one knew how to play. Butch had dragged out the drum set for a few miserable months, but other than that, no one bothered with them. Mrs. Palmer's grandmother used to play the viola, and Hazel had listened to reminisce about the music many times. There were recordings, of course, but Mrs. Palmer always said that they weren't as good as the real thing.

“We keep books for travelers,” Carol says, startling her out of her reverie, and smiles. “A few magazines as well. I'll set them on your bed, is that okay?”

“Mm,” Hazel agrees, pleased. She wonders if she has any of the classics that Hazel grew up with, _Jane Eyre_ or _Oliver Twist. Hm... maybe the apocalypse has new publications?_

When Carol returns with a full stack, Hazel is forced to concede that maybe, just maybe, the wastelanders are operating off a _slightly_ different frame of reference than what she's used to. The book at the top of the stack is saddle-stitched, the cover displaying a rough print of silhouettes: a man goring a Super Mutant behemoth with a broadsword.

“Oh. _The Conqueror of the Wastes: Chapter 18,”_ she reads aloud, faintly. “I don't believe I've read that one before.”

A collection of very steamy and eyebrow-raising short stories is next, by someone named Jayce Carter; there is a horrifying fold-out in the center of the book displaying the filthy and nude musculature of a mustachioed raider, which causes Hazel to slam the book shut, her cheeks blazing. She'd never seen male genitalia before, except in medical texts or in historical art reprints. Nothing... _arousing._ She wonders if Carol was aware that it was a smut book; she doesn't think so, given how motherly the ghoul is. She is scandalized, horrified, and a tiny bit interested in taking another peek.

Not now though. Maybe after everyone's asleep. When no one will know she's looking at it. _Maybe._

Fortunately, nothing else is that terrifyingly risque, and there are even a few pre-War novels that Hazel recognizes by name only, stories that she has heard of but never seen with her own eyes. Ones referenced in their English textbooks, ones that had never made it into their Vault.

She is thrilled that they've survived. For something so fragile, made of paper and ink, filled with a thousand dreams and ideas, a carefully-packaged set of ideals and morality, the lifeblood of another era. She had always expected people to survive, but not the culture.

Hazel wonders if Ahzrukhal remembers these books, if he'd want to talk about them sometime, but then she pushes the thought out of her mind. Just because he's pre-War doesn't mean he's read the same books as she has, or that he even enjoys reading at all.

For a few moments, she imagines what life might have been like if the matchmaking service had actually done their job right. If she'd been sent to a nice, normal young man around or a little above her age, someone kind and mature. Even someone much older would be fine, if only he was sweet and protective. Someone who she could laugh with and rely on, someone with a heartbreaking smile and a gentle heart.

She wants to read books with someone, to have children, someone to love and grow old with. She was escaping a terrible situation before, and she would have promised anything to be able to get away from Moriarty before he decided to sell her body to his customers, but that doesn't mean this situation is ideal; it's just somewhat better than the one that she'd just left.

Ahzrukhal can't have children. He's rotting and conniving and shark-like in his cold-blooded cruelty. He smells awful and he doesn't mind if he hurts her feelings. He's ugly, misshapen, and would probably be better off six feet under than walking around like he has any business being alive. When she looks at him, she sees nothing but a veneer of old-world manners shellacked over a heart of ice.

He's the last thing she could ever want.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is also not dead. I've got my outline created, and I'll be trying to focus on finishing this guy up next. I'm not sure which one will be up afterwards, either Mrs. Moriarty or Black and Twisted Heart, probably, with Love and Other Deadly Sins and the Fawkes fic coming in last.  
> After I finish with all of these, I'll get around to other ideas that I have docs for, like an extremely fucked-up Butch/LW, and maybe some Fallout: NV fics and FO4 fics. Who knows?


	6. Protective, Possessive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thank you to vidoxi for encouraging me to put this out. I've had this done for the past two months but didn't want to post it without knowing how long it'd take for the next bit to get done. Probably another day or so before it arrives! Thanks for reading!

_It's not even ten in the morning yet, and I'm already having an awful day._

Glum, she blows out a long breath of air. Well, there's only so long that she can mope about Ahzrukhal and Carol's evil wife. She worries at her lower lip for a moment, then brightens, remembering Snowflake's offer to do her hair. If he really meant it. She _thinks_ so, but she's realized that people from the wastes are much different from people raised in a Vault.

Hazel takes a few moments to adjust herself. From her arrival in Underworld yesterday, she's realized that the clothes Mrs. Buxton had sent along with her don't exactly allow her to fit in, but she doesn't have anything else... and truth be told, she's _used_ to nicer things. Clean clothes, soft fabrics. She's worn skirts and dresses before, anytime she wasn't in her regulation Vault suit, and to be honest, it's what she prefers. The beautiful pink chiffon evening gown isn't going to help her blend at all, but she at least hopes that it'll look good with whatever Snowflake decides to do with her hair.

She sees the stylist in his usual spot, facing away from her; she recognizes him by the collared shirt and the platinum hair, the easy stance that he holds himself in. As she approaches, her white shoes clacking on the tile floor, he turns his head slightly and breathes out. Smoke drifts through the air, and he spots her out of the corner of his eye.

“You look just as good as yesterday, baby. You up for that cut?”

His left hand disappears into his coat pocket. She catches sight of a piece of red plastic. _Is that Jet?_ She knows next to nothing about drugs. Just heard about them now and then, and saw caravans with what _might_ have been drug paraphernalia. Megaton had a strict no-drugs policy, and so she was never really sure.

She's a little disconcerted to see his pupils blown wide. As if he's in a pitch-black room. She's hardly ever seen anyone high, but she thinks that maybe he is? He doesn't sound much different though.

“Are you...” she starts, and then bites her lip, not sure if it's a rude question. Decides to rephrase. He'll correct her if she's wrong. “Were you smoking?”

“Jet,” Snowflake says, confirming her suspicions.

“Won't that mess you up?”

“Barely does a thing to us ghouls, baby. But if it makes you feel more comfortable, I'll stay away from the scissors today.”

“Please.”

Snowflake shrugs. “I don't mind. As long as you're still willing to let me do your hair.”

“Mm.”

“Back this way, then,” he says, and points her in the direction of a dusty exhibit room she's never entered before. She spies a swivel chair by a desk and starts for it, only to come to a halt: there's a disturbing amount of bloodied human remains rotting on the floor.

“Sorry, forgot to clean up. Most of the shufflers don't give a rat's ass about what the place looks like.” Snowflake kicks some of the worst of it farther away, making a disgusted expression as a flap of skin sticks to his polished shoe. “Being a barber in the Underworld means I gotta cut off more than just hair sometimes. You understand.”

 _Do I?_ Hazel doesn't think she wants to ask for any more details.

“Alright, have a seat. You got anything in mind for today?”

“Whatever you want to do,” Hazel says, and Snowflake brightens.

“Alright, great! An up-do, then, no one here has enough hair for me to do anything with. Somethin' real classy. That would suit a girl like you. Hm.” The ghoul busies himself with a whole arrangement of combs and pins and brushes, sprays and moisturizers in all different kinds of bottles, and then pauses. Stares at the entire arrangement as if planning something much more grand than a simple hairstyle; one would think that he's looking over plans to invade China.

“Hold on for a second,” he says at last, and steps away in a hurry.

It's far longer than one second, and Hazel is idly tapping her feet on the floor and wondering if she should go looking for him when he returns. He's beaming and carrying, of all things, what appears to be a full and steaming tea kettle.

“What is _that_ for?”

“Surely you don't expect me to do your hair without giving it a good washing first?” Snowflake chides. “When's the last time you got it good and scrubbed?”

Hazel thinks. “Two days ago?” That would have been on the boat, before she was escorted to Underworld and unceremoniously dropped off.

“Hmph. Lady like you should wash it every other day. Otherwise you're gonna get a really unhealthy build-up of oil, and that's not good for anyone. I wash mine, uh... twice a week? Gets different when you're a ghoul. Still, too much of that junk in your scalp, and you're going to start killing your hair.”

Snowflake pours the kettle into a basin behind her, and she feels the steam rising against the back of her neck. “We'll wait for that to cool a bit.” In the meantime, he wraps a polyester drape around her neck and starts brushing her hair.

Hazel hasn't gotten a real chance to stare at him without feeling awkward, nor has she felt particularly inclined to do so, but when he asks her to lean back and begins to sieve warm water over her head, there's not much to look up at but his face.

Snowflake is... interesting. She's never been this close to a ghoul before, which is sort of ridiculous considering that she's married to one. At first she studies his sunglasses, looking at the shift from clear glass at the bottom to the dark shade at the very top. She wonders what the purpose of having semi-clear shades is. Is it just cosmetic?

The stylist glances at her face, making eye contact, and she blushes and looks away, unwilling to look as if she were staring. In the water, his hands don't feel scarred or mottled. He massages her scalp with quick, brisk movements, adding in the tiniest scrape of fingernails; Hazel melts like putty as he scrubs shampoo into her scalp. She can practically feel the dirt and grease pulling away. It's _so_ comforting. She could easily fall asleep like this.

Instead, her half-closed eyes fall onto his mouth, looking at the withered and bruised lines of his face.

She frowns. “Snowflake?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Are you, uhm, hurt? You've got a cut above your nose—uhm, where your nose should be.” _Was that rude? Is it rude to draw attention to a ghoul's lack of a nose?_ Hazel's eyes widen as she catalogs the rest of the damage, sorting out old burns from fresh wounds. “Oh, no! Oh, Snowflake, your face! What happened to you?”

There's an ugly lump of a bruise just below his right eye, and another goose egg near his temple. The knots are already turning a nasty greenish-yellow, purpled along the sides. It looks like he was in a fight, or fell down a flight of stairs.

Snowflake smiles humorlessly. “Awh, baby, no need to flatter a guy.”

“You weren't hurt yesterday! What happened to you?”

“Disagreement with another ghoul,” he says, and his lips press tight for a moment. He rubs at her scalp a little harder, and then starts washing the suds out of her hair. “It's all sorted out now.”

“But who on earth—”

Her eyes widen, and her lips mouth the name.

“Doesn't matter,” he says quickly.

“Bullshit!” Hazel exclaims, catching both of them off-guard; she rarely swears, either out loud or in her thoughts. “I won't stand for this! He can't do that to you!”

“Listen, hun,” Snowflake says, wringing out her hair, “there's a lot that the old bastard can do. If you haven't noticed, he's rich as sin, and he's got the devil himself as his sidekick. People like us can't do a thing about it. Nor would we want to try. So don't get up thinking you're gonna do something reckless, okay? It's just gonna get you hurt. Or killed.”

“Ahzrukhal can't—”

“I said, drop it.”

Hazel sits in the swivel chair and stews, glaring at the broken-down marble statues on the other end of the room, as Snowflake blowdries her hair. _It's not fair._ What was Ahzrukhal thinking? Why would he ever hurt Snowflake? _He's sweet and gentle. Could... could it be that he wants me to be all alone and friendless? But if that was the case, he wouldn't have sent me to stay with Carol. He wouldn't be spending all that money. Unless it's just to keep me away from him...?_ She can't read the situation.

“What was it about?” she says at last.

“Look, baby—”

“Tell me,” Hazel says, and catches his wrist. His eyes widen, surprised, and for the first time that day, he really, truly _looks_ at her. Sees the determination in her face. Glassy, hazed-over eyes trace the set of her mouth, the angry lines in her brow.

He sighs.

“You. We were fighting over you.”

 _Me? Fighting over_ me?

Hazel doesn't think he could make any less sense. “Pardon?”

“I don't know what your business is with Ahzrukhal, but it's some messed-up shit. He called his dog on me and Charon just about tore my throat out. All over some creepy-ass display of ownership. Saying about how you belong to him. I don't think I'm supposed to be telling you this, though, so don't rat me out, okay?”

Hazel says, finally, in a daze, “I'm his wife.”

Snowflake jerks back. “Oh, _shit.”_

She blinks, realizing what she's just said, and blushes. “I mean... it was an arranged marriage. I just met him yesterday. He was fighting over me, and yet he had the gall to—”

_Hell no._

She's on her feet before she knows what she's doing. “I'm not letting him get away with this. I swear. I'm not a doll. He can't mess around with me like this. Hurting my friends, making me stay with that awful ghoul—”  
“Baby, stop! Shit, think about this for one goddamn minute—”

But she's too far gone. She's furious. Little gets Hazel so rankled except when someone violates her trust; she had wanted to love Ahzrukhal, had wanted to make it work. But it's clear that she was never meant to be anything more than a twisted diversion. _He's doing all he can to hurt me, and I won't fucking let him._

She's out the door before he can say another word.

 

* * *

 

The goddamn ghoul is staring at him again.

Normally, Ahzrukhal doesn't say anything about it, even though it pisses him off; he knows that when he tells Charon to stop staring at him, the other ghoul cracks a smirk at looks away, pleased to have unsettled his master. It's just an intimidation tactic.

That's what Ahzrukhal keeps telling himself, anyway.

A bead of sweat runs down the side of his neck as he studiously ignores Charon's burning gaze. This has been going on for the past three hours. Ahzrukhal forgets about it now and then, serving customers and kicking Patches out of the bar, but anytime he has a break, there it is again. Those fucking glassy eyes. _Dammit. Is he even going to blink?_ He has to wonder what he's thinking about. Killing him, probably. Torturing him. Charon hates everyone, but no one more than his master.

Around ten, the customers clear out, the regular alcoholics and huffers having had their morning fix to stave off withdrawal for a few more hours. Snowflake hasn't been in yet, which isn't exactly surprising; Ahzrukhal doesn't expect to see him for the next few days. No matter. He'll be back once he's run out of Jet.

Ahzrukhal catches a glimpse of Charon's fucking dead man's stare again and turns his head, resolute. No. He's not going to let that fucker see him squirm. Let him stare. He'll make him fucking regret it.

He turns his back on him, just to piss him off, and goes through his stock and accounts. _Running low on red wine again._ Visitors love to drink wine here, for some reason. Think it's romantic to sip at a glass of alcohol older than the undead monsters around them, in the city of the damned. The regulars are more interested in stronger stuff, shit that could tan leather. There are stills that Ahzrukhal runs all over the Capitol Wasteland, small-time folks that he pays good money to manufacture for him and him alone. The Ninth Circle brings in customers all the time for that sole reason.

 _I'll need to send Charon out again soon,_ he muses. _Maybe in a few days. Or sooner. Fuck, it'll have to be sooner or else I'll go mad with those eyes boring into the back of my skull._ Normally, it's Quinn who goes out for Ahzrukhal's liquor, but sometimes there are certain situations that require someone with less... discerning of taste.

Charon is good for those jobs. One of the few things that he takes pride in and enjoys. Sometimes he comes back caked in blood, black cracking pieces coming away in thick peels, left on to show off like he's some kind of fucking territorial Deathclaw. Other times, he returns clean but humming with a dark energy.

More importantly, he returns with a large amount of caps, or booze, or weapons or bullets or drugs or literally anything that Ahzrukhal might want but can't normally get. And that's enough for him to be willing to let Charon loose for awhile.

He hears the door as he's bent over looking into his cabinet, and frowns. A customer, at this time? Everyone knows he prefers to take a short break in between ten and eleven in the morning. _What's that?_ All at once, his nose is filled with the most delicious and vaguely familiar scent...

_“Where the hell is he?”_

Ah.

He stands, careful to shut and lock the cabinet behind him before he turns to look at his bride.

Fuck, what a thought. She's a dream, and clearly furious. Her cheeks are flushed harder than he's ever seen them, her hair tangled and still a little damp. Where would she have gotten a bath around here? Carol, no doubt, always wanting to fuss over her dear precious smoothskins.

His gaze skirts around the visible and delicate lines of her collarbones, the rise of a soft, creamy-white bosom. He's not going to stare; he's not a lecher, he's a gentleman; but when she's not looking, he'll find his gaze returning there again and again. He feels that dark and sickly hunger sweeping up inside of him again. The urge to possess and control and _break._

She never should have come here. _He_ never should have asked for Margaret Buxton to bring him anyone. He should have known it would be a disaster. Should have known that the perfect woman for him would be someone he doesn't deserve.

He belongs down here, in the dark, and seeing his beautiful wife, like a shining beacon, a falling star, so close to him... it just makes him want what he can't have.

“Hazel,” he says, his smile sharp-edged, and rests his hands on the bar. “Good morning. What brings you here?”

“You bastard,” she snaps, and Ahzrukhal's back stiffens. He's not used to taking abuse, especially not when he's unwilling to retaliate. “Snowflake. You hurt him! Didn't you!”

He blinks, slowly, then grimaces and lights up. _I'm going to need a cigarette for this conversation._ He usually doesn't smoke in the bar. This is going to be a special occasion.

“Yes.”

Hazel pauses, seemingly surprised that he'd answered so easily. Her anger deflates, just a little. “Why the hell would you do something like that? He's been good to me!”

“Let's get something straight,” Ahzrukhal says. He looks over her pink cheeks, that gorgeous hue that so perfectly matches her fluffy pink dress. Doesn't have a goddamn stain on it. She must have had it made for her specifically by that _Wastelanders Connect!_ group. Just makes what he's about to say all the more delicious. He waits a beat. Savoring. And:

“You belong to _me.”_

Her pretty little green eyes widen.

“Everything you have, everything you are. It's all mine. Which is good for you, because even if I don't want you here, I'm going to take good care of you. But until you're signing our divorce, you're mine. So if Snowflake starts looking at you in a way that I don't appreciate, then I'm going to be a little upset. And looking is bad enough. But he was touching you.” He grins, humorlessly. “And I was never that great at sharing.”

He watches with interest as her face turns white. _Smoothskins are so fascinating._ What sort of expression is that? Shock? Fear? Horror?

She slaps him, and Ahzrukhal tastes blood.

_Ah. Fury._

Charon is already striding across the room, knife in hand, and Ahzrukhal shakes his head. “Go back to your post. Bar the doors. I can handle this myself.”

“You ass!” Hazel is screaming. “How dare you! How dare you _mmph—”_

Ahzrukhal clamps a hand over her mouth, holding her tightly against him, and she lets out a muted shriek and flails. She bites his hand as he begins to drag her away, and Ahzrukhal hardly feels it. His heart is pounding, vision going white around the edges, adrenaline overtaking him.

 

* * *

 

Hazel isn't quite sure what's happening; it's all moving so fast; but soon Ahzrukhal is dragging her towards an unmarked door in the back and the thought of what he might to do her there is so terrifying that she lets out a muffled scream and tries to fight. He doesn't even seem to notice. He's so _strong._ She had no idea that ghouls were so powerful, that a man as old and frail-looking as the withered old bartender could hold her down without even breaking a sweat.

In a panic, tears forming at the corners of her eyes, she bites his hand. The skin is raw and foul, tasting vaguely of rot, and she dry-heaves in his arms, going slack for a moment. She can't see anything, not with how hazy her vision's going, except that she hears Ahzrukhal opening the door and she's unceremoniously tossed on something soft and squeaking and _oh god, she's on his bed—_ he closes the door behind them and when she leaps up to try to run, he tosses her back.

Her head slams against the wall, and she stops struggling, the light of consciousness fading from her eyes.

 


	7. Punishment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azzie's fury gets the best of him, at least for awhile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: (I don't usually post warnings, so listen up!)  
> -sexual assault  
> -mentions of previous rape  
> -domestic abuse
> 
> And make sure you read my ending notes once you're done with everything!

When she wakes up, she's calm, and she isn't in pain. She's staring up at the ceiling, wondering where she is, when it all slams back into her with a sickening rush. _Ahzrukhal. Snowflake. There was a fight..._

She remembers hitting the wall, and flinches.

It's when she reaches for her face that she stops, and her stomach turns.

She can't touch her face. She turns, first to her right and then to her left, and a horrified whimper exits her trembling mouth.

He's tied her wrists to the bedposts.

 

* * *

 

Hazel didn't used to be afraid of men. She had no reason to fear anyone in the Vault, not until Butch grew up and started showing interest in the girls. There were a few times that she'd feared him then, in a half-excited, half-terrified, girlish way. Fear masking private fantasies. But nothing ever happened, and she knew she was never in any real danger from him and his stupid Tunnel Snakes.

Leaving the Vault, of course, was an entirely different matter. From then on, she had to watch and check her every movement. Don't show too much fear, but don't be too confident; keep enough space around others without stepping too far back; make eye contact with only the right people. Her whole life was a balance of respectfulness and modesty without appearing to be a target. Any sign of weakness and she could forget about Moriarty; one of the traders would have snapped her up and taken her along. One of the homeless lowlifes in the common house could have raped and defiled her. Anything could have happened, and Hazel was brutally aware of this.

Her whole life was filled with fear. Men quickly became more terrifying than the still-abstract Deathclaws, the monsters that she had heard of but never seen. Men were the immediate danger, the stuff of her nightmares.

She'd thought that she would be saved from this if she married.

She was wrong.

Ahzrukhal is standing by the closed door, his jacket slung across the back of a nearby chair. The overhead light is off, the only source of illumination being the floor lamp in the corner; the dim light forces the planes of his face into even more terrifying angles, the furrows of his skin impossibly deep. His missing nose is a cavernous hole, his sunken eyes dark marbles, reflecting pinpoints of yellow.

Withered fingers carefully remove polished cufflinks, and the only sound besides her breathing is the quiet _clink_ as he sets them onto the bedside table.

“You're awake.”

It isn't a question, and Hazel doesn't answer. Instead, she swallows hard, and watches him remove his belt.

“Please,” she says, and she doesn't know what she's asking for. For freedom? For him to have mercy on her? For a fresh start? For him to simply be _gentle?_ But maybe it could also be a plea for it to be gotten over with quickly.

“No,” he says, and his fingers pause at the buttons of his shirt. Ahzrukhal pauses and then shakes his head, his lips thinning at some unknown thought. Instead, he unzips his slacks; Hazel instinctively draws back, trembling, and jerks at the bonds pinning her wrists to the bedposts. Her legs are free, though, and she draws them up to her chest and turns her body away.

“Please don't,” she begs again, her plea more definitive. But just as before, her husband doesn't listen to her; he kneels on the bed, his shirt still fully-buttoned, his pants barely undone—and he puts firm hands on her calves, forcing her legs open.

“I'm going to tell you something,” he says, just as Hazel is cringing and crying in fear and anticipation of the upcoming torture, “and you are going to remember it.”

Hazel tries to pull back while he speaks, but he reaches forward and snaps the elastic of her panties against her skin in censure; it doesn't hurt, but it's frightening and startling enough that tears come to her eyes.

“You belong to me. I'd told you that I have no interest in sharing. Not with Snowflake or with anyone else.”

Hazel cries, “I didn't—I wasn't—”

“Oh, but weren't you? Why else would you be so quick to cling to him?” Ahzrukhal asks softly. Quiet rage burns in the deceptively-gentle tone. He's looking down at her, but Hazel can't bring herself to meet his eyes. _It's too frightening._ “Why else would you defend him? You've spent more time with that greasy bastard than Carol, and you're _staying_ with her. Did you really think you could get away with this?”

“I haven't done anything!” The shout is torn from her anguished lungs, but Ahzrukhal's grip flexes on her calves as if he hasn't heard her speak yet.

“Haven't you?” He laughs bitterly. “It hardly matters. Once I'm finished with you, you won't forget.”

“No!” she sobs. Ahzrukhal rucks up her skirts, allowing better access to her undergarments, and pushes the lacy midsection aside, leaving her bared before him. She cringes again, throwing her head back, willing the bonds to break, trying to push him away with her legs, but he's too strong. _Why did I ever agree to this? Why did I ever decide to come here? I should have known that an arranged marriage would be no better than selling myself as a whore under Moriarty... I should have known!_

There's a pressure at her entrance, and Hazel squeezes her eyes shut.

But there is no pain, and Ahzrukhal grunts out a small curse. There's an odd, insistent movement against the bed, and Hazel risks a downward glance; her husband has taken himself in hand and is roughly stroking, punishment temporarily forgotten; a few long moments pass with Hazel watching, horrified and stunned, with no change.

Flaccid.

“Are you...?” she speaks without thinking, too surprised to hold back.

Ahzrukhal snarls, fumbling with his trousers, and zips himself back up, embarrassed. _His face... is he_ blushing? His expression is furious and ashamed. And then: _oh my god. He's impotent?_

A small mercy, because he immediately snarls, “Don't think I can't hurt you regardless.”

But the initial horror of the moment is gone, and looking into his eyes, she sees that he realizes he has lost the edge of her fear. She doesn't know Ahzrukhal well, but she _does_ know that he isn't going to disfigure her or kill her. He's been far too polite to her in public to warrant the sort of behavior that would make him lose face with the other residents of Underworld.

He cuts her loose, and Hazel adjusts her panties before rubbing her wrists. There are thick red welts across her skin, and a few thin lines of blood where the rope fibers cut more deeply than the rest.

She wants to run, but for some reason, in the dim light and even with a knife in hand, Ahrukhal looks more wary than she does. “I told you, there's nothing going on between Snowflake and I. He was just friendly to me, that's all.”

She doesn't know why she's staying. She should be running right now. Should be already on her way out the doors past Charon, back into Carol's Place and throwing a table in front of the entrance. But somehow, knowing that he can't actually rape her boosts her confidence.

 _Stupid. He already said he can hurt you without sex. There's more than one way to claim ownership over a person._ Her mind flits to the stories of branding and slave collars. And just because he can't penetrate her with his cock doesn't mean he can't use his hands or some other object to try to cause her pain. Her stomach clenches.

Ahzrukhal leaves the knife on the table and crosses his arms. In the low lighting, she can't tell what he's thinking; his expression leaves no hints whatsoever for her to scrutinize. “Regardless, you know that I cannot let you leave without punishing you?”

“But... I haven't done anything!”

“You talked back to me in front of Charon,” he says, his face remaining blank. “I am not the type to let anyone insult me without... reparations.”

_Was I really stupid enough to think that he would let me go so easily?_

And Hazel's stomach sinks.

 

* * *

 

Fuck, she looks beautiful, her cheeks flushed and chest heaving in the darkness of his room. Like a trapped animal with nowhere to run. Ahzrukhal's eyes do not leave hers, but he hears her breathing quicken.

“But,” she says piteously, “I'm your wife.”

Which... well, that _is_ true. But what sort of proper wife would speak against her husband in public? “You should have known not to curse at me in front of my employee, then,” Ahzrukhal says. “But you are right. Hurting you would be...”

 _Improper._ Although he almost did, and it galls him that it had come to this, that he'd lost control enough, had gotten angry enough, to try to force himself upon her and possess her like some cheap wasteland bitch.

It's been a number of years since he's forced a woman beneath him; probably over a decade at this point; but that's not particularly important. The last woman had just been a leering piece of shit that had deserved the humiliation. None of it had to do with lust or sex, only the power, only about him putting a coarse broad on her back and in her place.

But Hazel, though... he's never forced an innocent, never forced a _lady,_ and certainly never someone he was genuinely attracted to. He's almost grateful that his body had stubbornly rebelled against him, but now that leaves him with few options of how to discipline his wayward wife.

What on earth is he left with? He refuses to hit her and mark her where someone might see, so... spanking? A frisson of heat runs down his spine at the thought. _No._ Too intimate. More interesting to him than parting her thighs, something he's done with countless women, and if he's going to punish her it's not going to be something that he intends to get off on.

 _Though..._ he wonders what might have happened if he'd managed to force her. Would he have enjoyed it? He considers it for a long moment, and then shakes his head. Better off not thinking about it. If he'd succeeded in raping her, it would make him no better than the disgusting men of the wastes who take pleasure in the corruption of innocence. Ahzrukhal knows he's foul, and hates himself for some of the things he's done on his best days, but he's never raped a virgin, nor anyone who hadn't attacked him or his associates first.

“Ahzrukhal?”

Fuck, his name sounds delicious coming from her mouth.

“Fine,” he says, disgusted with himself. “I won't touch Snowflake again, so long as you keep your distance from him. You have my word.”

“Thank you.” Hazel turns to leave, but Ahzrukhal stops her.

“You're forgetting the small matter of your punishment,” he says, irritated both with her and himself. Angry that he is forced into doing this. Angry that she is _still_ somehow trusting or naive enough to turn her back on him.

But what on earth can he do to her? What can he do to punish her without harming her, without _raping_ her, without leaving any kind of mark? He reminds himself that she isn't his to keep. As soon as Margaret Buxton comes back, Hazel is going to be going with her. It can't be anything too severe; nor can it be anything light enough to let her think that she can get away with defying him again. _At least, not so rudely._

Hazel looks at him with large and frightened eyes.

For a moment, Ahzrukhal loses his focus; he sees that shade of green, the rarest of apocalyptic colors, and remembers shiny leaves and cool waters and the laughter of a long-dead couple, a pair of innocent people who had never once dreamed of this terrible reality.

He shakes himself, and his lips twist into a mocking grimace. _Too easy,_ he thinks, but he knows it'll work.

“Kiss me,” he says, “and you may go.”

After all, what could be more humiliating for a smoothskin to kiss a ghoul? Ahzrukhal has no doubts about what Hazel thinks of him. He can tell by her expressions that he repulses her, by the wrinkling of her nose that she's disgusted by the fetid stench of his bloated, rotting corpse of a body. Nothing could be more horrible for her to press her lips up against his reeking visage, nothing more damningly shameful for her to be forced to lick the seam of his mouth and let her palate be corrupted with the taste of cigarettes and stagnant phlegm.

He can tell by her shudder that he's right, and so, emboldened, he steps forward. She may have gained an advantage over him with his momentary lapse, but the power has always been his, and now she's remembering this.

“Alright,” she murmurs. “That's... that's my punishment, then?”

Ahzrukhal inclines his head.

“Thank you,” she says, taking him off-guard, and her eyes are kind and sincere. “For not... you know.”

She leans up onto her toes, surprising him again, and Ahzrukhal's eyes close in involuntary bliss as her lips brush against his. Has he ever felt anything so soft? _Like a silk ribbon,_ he thinks absently, and he lifts his hands to her waist. She's kissing him so gently, and it's probably her intention to keep herself from too much contact, but it's not much of a punishment that way, is it?

Ahzrukhal steps forward again, so that their bodies are flush with each other, her legs on either side of his own. Any closer and she'd be straddling him. He presses down into the kiss, opening his mouth slightly, and something foul inside of him cheers at the thought of his rot inside of her—he pushes it away. This is her punishment, not his enjoyment.

Trusting that she isn't about to bite him in retaliation, he sweeps his tongue forward, probing—and, _ah,_ has he ever tasted anything better? Like sweet mint and spring rain, a light complexity of her toothpaste and saliva. She's delicious, and it's all Ahzrukhal can do to keep from devouring her.

Holding back a groan, he pushes her against the door, and her hands clutch at his waist to keep herself from falling, or maybe to shove him back; whatever her intention, it only serves to ignite the warm ashes of the fire within him.

He's losing himself, he knows he is, and he remembers that he's not supposed to be enjoying this, but with her hands on his body and her tongue caressing his own as if she's taking as much pleasure in this as he is? It destroys the last shred of composure that he has left.

He surges against her. His cock, that traitorous thing, is rampant against her soft belly, held back by his hastily-buttoned trousers, but he can feel the heat of her body against it. His teeth click against hers as he tilts his head, deepening their kiss. He breathes heavily through his nose—what's left of it—but apparently Hazel is not as competent with prolonged kisses as he is, because she breaks away after a few too-short seconds, gasping as if he'd held her underwater.

“I, I—” she stammers, her eyes wild, and shrinks back.

Her reaction is as sobering as a bucket of cold water. Ahzrukhal sneers, disgusted with himself; he'd meant to punish his wife, not torture the poor girl. He'd lost himself for a long moment, too wrapped up in the heady sensations of his wife's mouth and body.

“Get out,” he growls, and Hazel flees the room.

_Idiot._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer:
> 
> In no way do I condone rape, abuse, or 'punishments' in any kind of relationship. To be perfectly honest, I think that a rapist should be castrated at the least and face capital punishment at the worst. Is Ahzrukhal a rapist? Sure. But he's not the hero of the story, and I want my readers to know that I'm not gonna romanticize this aspect of his character.  
> (And speaking of romanticism... If you notice, I barely used the word 'rape' in the chapter itself, at least in Azzie's perspective. It's a harsh word, and not even the most evil and foul people would call themselves one; especially not a guy like Azzie, who considers himself to be one of the most proper people in the wastes. Just because I'm not using it doesn't mean that I'm trying to avoid it or romanticize it; rather, Azzie's the one trying to avoid it because he knows it's fucked up.)  
> However, as distasteful as the whole subject is, I didn't want to whitewash him. Ahzrukhal is canonically one of the most evil (or possibly THE most evil) of all Fallout 3 characters. Both his karma status and his reputation say something pretty serious is going on with him, and with how common murder is, there's not much worse you can get than being a rapist. He's cold, calculating, and yet stays under the radar--so that's why I wrote this chapter the way I did. Rape is a much quieter crime than murder; I mean, hell, look around at society today. Everyone hears about murder, but when was the last time you saw a rape in the paper? It almost never gets reported, and is almost never mentioned because it's so personal, so private, so uncomfortable for people to talk about.  
> So I'm not gonna make Azzie a cute lil peach. But he didn't rape Hazel, and I'm hoping that his self-hatred does a little to redeem him in your eyes. My point is to humanize him, to hint at what could make a respectable older pre-War gentleman turn into the savage bastard he is in 2277.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I wholeheartedly apologize to anyone who's ever been victimized, if I've upset or offended in any way. This is fiction. For the real-life predators, I have zero tolerance or sympathy. They'll get what's coming to them.


End file.
